Kindnesses and Cares

It had been a couple of hours since FS1 docked and he hadn't heard anything from sick bay yet so he was getting concerned. Chip arrived at the sick bay door, paused a moment to brace himself for whatever he would face inside, then walked in.

"Doc?"

"Please let me work, sir. I can't tell you anything yet. He's still in deep shock. I've been trying to get him stabilized enough for surgery but it's difficult. I can't do my job with you hanging around. Please leave sick bay."

Chip stood hesitant to go.

"Please, sir. I'd prefer to not make that an order."

Chip felt helpless but Doc was rarely this abrupt so he knew he had to leave. The quick glimpse he had of his friend's face was unnerving. Lee looked like a lost cause to him. After dealing with Maria he found he was trembling now with anxiety for Lee and needed reassurance. Asking for a report on Lee had seemed the thing to do but it was interfering with the help Lee needed.

"Sorry, Doc." He turned to leave.

"Mr. Morton I will contact you as soon as I can, I hope you know that." Doc was speaking to him without looking up from his hands, busy trying to save a life.

Chip nodded without speaking. Doc couldn't see his nod but this was one of the very rare times that Chip had no control over his face and voice. He had reached the end of composure. He sniffed and wiped a finger under his eye as he stepped out of sick bay. Once outside he pivoted and leaned his forehead against the bulkhead and tried to stop the quivering chin by compressing his lips, one hand spread open on the bulkhead by his head. He didn't know how long he had been standing there feeling weak and trying to not snivel when he felt a hand tentatively laid on his shoulder and quickly removed.

"Sir, I think you could use a coffee. You've been on your feet forever, sir." Kowalski hesitated, it wasn't his place to touch or comfort the XO, after all the man was a real hard ass, but Mr. Morton sure looked like he needed a friend right now and his best ones weren't available. He didn't think a coffee was what Mr. Morton really needed but it was something Kowalski could offer, to let him know that he understood that things were tough for him right now.

Mr. Morton sniffed and rubbed his hand over his eyes and face. He straightened up and squared his shoulders before turning away from the bulkhead. He flashed a quick glance at Kowalski then just as quickly fixed his eyes down the passageway. He didn't want a coffee. He wanted Lee healthy and strong. He wanted the Admiral to not be a murderer. He wanted to not be crying in front of a crewman.

He sniffed again, betraying the tears he had already wiped from his eyes. Ski was right he needed to sit down. He wanted to collapse in a heap on the deck and bawl his eyes out but a coffee would be more acceptable.

"Sure Kowalski. That would be good. Thank you." He let himself be shepherded by Kowalski's awkward concern to his cabin. "Sorry, Ski. I'm not behaving too well."

"Don't worry about it, sir. You're human. This is hard on everyone but it's the worst for you." Kowalski didn't quite know what else to say. He pretty much guided the Exec to the chair at his desk. Mr. Morton was exhausted and it was sure beginning to show no matter how good he was at hiding his real feelings.

"I'll just get you something, sir." And Kowalski was off, doing what was in his power to help Mr. Morton.

When he returned a while later with coffee, a sandwich and a slice of pie he found Mr. Morton bent over his desk his head cradled on his arms fast asleep. He quietly placed the tray on the desk, picked up a blanket neatly folded at the foot of the bunk, carefully shook it out and draped it over the Exec's shoulders. Then with a final sympathetic look at Morton he silently slipped out of the cabin.

Young Riley was dismayed.

The devastation of the unprovoked shooting of Captain Crane had Riley shaking his head in shattered hopes and puzzlement. He idolized Crane, thought him that one officer to emulate. The one he envisioned serving under as a junior officer himself someday. The man he wanted as his mentor. Although Riley would never admit it to anyone, maybe not even to himself, he dreamed of being someday to Crane what Crane was to Nelson now. All the crew knew the two men were more than a good team. Even if the Skipper always spoke to the Admiral as befitted a subordinate they could all tell they were friends.

Then the Skipper had been shot, disappeared off their radar, and lost to them. Riley's as yet unspoken dreams of perhaps becoming a midshipman, a life at sea, progressing up through the ranks had vanished with him.

Admiral Nelson, the father figure to all the men aboard, had shot his best friend Captain Crane in cold blood for no reason. Riley had been right there. He hadn't seen the actual shot, none of them had. All of them busy with their duties but he had jerked up from his screen at the sound. He had helped wrestle the Admiral to the deck after the Skipper fell. Riley looked down at his hands, they started trembling every time he thought about it.

Then the Captain in a miraculous recovery from the untreated abdominal gunshot wound had decked his Executive Officer and good friend Mr. Morton and flown off in FS1.

Crazy.

Then more craziness had happened. There was no reason for the Admiral to go off in a rubber raft alone in the South Pacific. It made no sense. Morton even wished him luck as he left! He and Kowalski had sat at their stations confused, grieving and shaken by the happenings of the past days. The Seaview herself felt sad to Riley. The hums and sounds of the control room seemed a rude intrusion on the underlying silent lament of the boat.

And then came the order to fire a missile on an uninhabited island. Riley knew then that the Seaview was a madhouse.

He was ordered to show the guest Maria around. That just crystalized how this job isolated him from the other half of humanity. It made him think and at the moment he thought he just wanted to get off this boat, go home, go surfing and hang with the crowd. Some other day look for some other job. This one was too unpredictable, chaotic, and dangerous. This mission had crushed the hopes and dreams he had built up in his mind. Although the application to the Academy was already in the works maybe it was time to wake up and change careers before this one killed him.

Kowalski didn't feel very good. He was back to regular duty after his harrowing experience shooting Krueger, which had resulted in him having a bit of a melt down. He had seen just one too many bizarre thing. Since then he had felt an impending sense of doom; that something bad was about to happen. He had been right about that. Sure enough not long after the Admiral had snapped and shot the Skipper. Ski had tried to talk to Riley about it but that hadn't alleviated the continuing feeling of more catastrophe about to happen. Despite his own difficulties he started to realize that Mr. Morton was struggling with the whole situation and that wasn't encouraging. If Mr. Morton was having trouble then they were all in trouble, so he had been doing his best to encourage Mr. Morton. So far it hadn't seemed to help.

Chief Sharkey was having a very tough time. Sharkey wanted to talk to the Admiral, find out what had happened. For sure there was a reason, a good one, there had to be. He had always affirmed that he knew the Admiral best of anyone aboard and he still thought he did. Belying that belief was the situation they were in. His Skipper, whom he thought the world of, was lying in sick bay with a bullet in him. A bullet the Admiral had put there, the Skipper's own best friend.

Sometimes when the Skipper and the Admiral were together talking or working he had noticed how the Admiral looked at the Skipper when the Skipper wasn't noticing. Like when he was plotting a coarse or checking the sonar screen. The Admiral would look at the Skipper with a look of pride in his eyes, like the Skipper was something special to him. The Admiral never let the Skipper see that and not the crew either if he could help it but Sharkey prided himself on being aware of the things around him and he just knew the Admiral had a soft spot for the Skipper.

Not that they didn't fight at times but that was predictable. The Skipper didn't like the Admiral to get so caught up in a project or a mission that he forgot about the men, or the mission parameters and then the Skipper would remind him. The Admiral often didn't take that too well and the two of them would go to the nose, close the crash doors to 'discuss' the issue. Everyone in the control room had heard those 'discussions' leaking through the privacy the crash doors were supposed to provide.

Afterwards the crash doors would open, the Admiral would always be already going up the spiral stairs and all the men would surreptitiously eye the Skipper as he headed to the mike to give the orders. They always tried to guess who 'won' before the Skipper clicked the mike on and confirmed it. The Skipper didn't have the poker face that Morton did. He was good at a very serious expression but they could tell more from his eyes and body language than they ever could from Mr. Morton.

The past few days though, things had been very different, very unsettling. The Skipper shot and off the boat, the Admiral in a straight jacket then off the boat too. Then both of them back aboard. No one was saying anything about anything. When Sharkey showed up at the Admiral's cabin he hadn't even been allowed in to talk to the Admiral. Normally he could talk to the Admiral anytime, no problem. Now it was a problem.

No one was saying if the Skipper was going to be all right. Sharkey knew he had an especial link of friendship with the Admiral but he worried about every man aboard when they were at risk, or hurt. The Skipper was second only to the Admiral in his hierarchy of who to worry about most. He needed to worry about the Skipper, in fact the whole damn crew tried to watch out for the Skipper. The Skipper looked after them and always seemed to pay the highest price to keep them all alive. The scuttlebutt about the Admiral shooting the Skipper to save the crew made no sense. The Admiral wouldn't hurt the Skipper. He had to talk to the Admiral, but Mr. Morton wasn't letting anyone see the Admiral.

The Exec had been keeping up his impassive face most of the time so they couldn't read how the situation was developing but Mr. Morton was beginning to show how much he was suffering from it all. Well as much as Mr. Morton showed anything. His shoulders didn't quite square up as much as usual, and once today he loosened his tie. That had the entire control room duty watch on pins and needles for a while, sitting on the edges of their seats until he snugged it up again and they could all relax in relief. Sharkey himself had even heard Mr. Morton sigh audibly. That was one of the Skipper's tells not Mr. Morton's. But the past couple of days they had heard the Exec sigh twice. That was serious. So serious that Kowalski had taken to bringing cups of coffee to Mr. Morton at any hour of the day. Sharkey figured that meant things were pretty close to hopeless if Kowalski was bringing Mr. Morton coffee.

In sick bay Doc heaved a huge sigh as he finished closing. The surgery was successful, the bullet removed, damage stitched, the site cleansed, and now closed. Doc couldn't believe that the bullet had not killed the Captain.

The wound had not been treated for several days as Krueger had flown to the South Pacific leaving Nelson and Morton to figure out where he had gone and get Seaview there too.

Fortunately for Lee while Krueger inhabited his body, seemingly magically, the wound had not bled despite all the physical activity. He and the corpsmen had started calling that wound state a 'phantom stasis'. The wound didn't get better but hadn't gotten worse. They would never know why but the medical team assumed it was simply so Krueger could enjoy the Skipper's body without blood leaking out and making a mess.

Once Krueger left Lee's body that stasis had stopped. Lee had been bleeding internally all the way back to Seaview. He had been so weak, it took them some time to stabilize his blood volume and blood pressure enough to operate and his condition was still very precarious even now after surgery. Just because the wound hadn't bled while Krueger was running around didn't mean it hadn't gotten infected. The Skipper was getting IV antibiotics now to treat that.

Doc sighed again. He was exhausted and needed a coffee right away and something to eat before too long. His energy was flagging now that the concentration required for surgery was done. He sat down and rested his forearms on his knees. There was still a lot to do before he could take a real break. He also needed to do basic checks on their passenger and Nelson. He was not looking forward to that.

Doc had been very much against Mr. Morton's decision to let Nelson out of sick bay. Nelson had obviously had a severe breakdown of some sort. Nelson needed peace, quiet, a secure location, drugs and counselling. He also needed a lawyer.

Doc sighed deeply again. Dammit, Nelson was his friend too.

Much as he needed food and rest before he did anything more he needed to speak with Mr. Morton. He lifted the mike.